Index
Market in General
Stocks
Currencies
Last Week's Views
| Investment Views (November
2nd 1998) |
Instead of writing my clients
individually I thought I might as well
do a weekly summary of my views
on the markets, the currencies,
the economy, the world, and
life in general.
Markets in General
The markets corrected very gently indeed. The Dow did not even
break 8200 on the downside.
Instead it recovered by the 28th. And we're retesting the highs
made on the 20th: 8650. The US
reported higher than expected 3rd quarter GDP growth rate of 3.3%.
The market rallied strongly
as a result. The Goldilock scenario seems to be resurrected.
The American economy is
growing strongly without any inflation, while the Fed is forced by
the international financial
turmoil to cut interest rates.
The European markets, as I have repeatedly observed, are relatively
weaker than the
US. While the US market is only about 7% down from its all time
high, the Dax
is still about 24% off and the Swiss SMI is about 23% below its all
time high made
this July. We see the US markets stuck in a trading range, unless
we close firmly above
8650. We still see the SMI recovering at least to the 6800 level.
The markets all look very overbought nowadays. But because the
markets
were so badly oversold, we feel that this indicator is not quite useful
at the moment.
Go to Index
Stocks
Our favorite stocks remains SAP, Nokia, Raisio
Group, Ericcson, Cable and Wireless, Orange
and Bachem.
| High of the Year |
Low of the Year |
Stock |
Last Week's
Close |
Daily high |
Daily low |
This Week's Close* |
| SFr. 1495 |
1351 |
Bachem |
1900 |
1850 |
1810 |
1810 |
| Gbp 8.13 |
4.67 |
C&W |
6.50 |
6.63 |
6.38 |
6.57 |
| SFr. 51 |
25 |
Ericsson |
27.50 |
29.80 |
28.50 |
29 |
| FIM 509 |
182 |
Nokia |
421 |
445 |
435 |
442 |
| Gbp 8 |
2.40 |
Orange |
5.43 |
5.75 |
5.37 |
5.52 |
| FIM 1080 |
640 |
Raisio Group |
82.50 |
78 |
72.40 |
72.50 |
| SFr. 1029 |
419 |
SAP |
530 |
566 |
550 |
560 |
| SFr. 2350 |
1820 |
Stratec |
1650 |
1750 |
1720 |
1720 |
|
*closing prices of Thursday, 29th of
October 1998
There seems to be a little bit of delay in marketing Benecol in the
US. The FDA seems to have
some reservations about how to label the margarine. Raisio's
stock prices seem to have
tanked in connection to this news. We think this is creating
an excellant buying opportunity.
Go to Index
Currencies
The dollar has stablized. It has been trading in a range between
SFr. 1.32 and 1.35. Everyone is still
waiting to see whether Brazil can avoid devaluing the Real. We're
still convinced that the IMF has
no good recipe against weak currencies. Without flanking measures
that will curb capital flight and
speculations, we do not think the Brazilians can defend the Real successfully
in the intermediate
term. The dollar will need to be weaker to stablize the Real
and other emerging market currencies.
We therefore expect the Fed will come through with another interest
rate cut in November.
Go to Index
| *The stock prices are provided
for informational puruposes only and not intended for trading
purposes. The opinions expressed in these pages are what they are:
opinions! |
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